The Manhattan Times

Northern Manhattan’s hungry stretch food supply

by Adam Garrett-Clark

Nearly a year after losing his job at a fritura truck on W. 204th Street because of slow business, 32-year-old Roberto Chino finally sought help for his family of five children at a local food pantry on W. 207th Street and Post Avenue.

The two white plastic bags of pasta, hamburger patties, canned vegetables and orange juice that he picked up Fri., Dec. 11 weren’t much, but definitely helped, he said. The family is currently surviving on sales from his wife’s homemade tamales, purchased on the street by the lunch crowd, and a few odd jobs Chino can pick up at construction sites in the Bronx.

The Chinos are just one of innumerable local families who are finding that local food pantries are not as well stocked as they usually are this time of year.

“The holiday season is a time for giving, but because of the bad economy, New York families that typically donate food, warm clothes and other basics to those in need just can’t afford to this year,” Senator Kirsten Gillibrand said in a telephone press conference on Dec. 8. “As a result, food bank shelves have gone bare, and hunger and food insecurity have reached disturbing, historic highs.”

According to a study released by Gillibrand’s office, need across the state has gone up: approximately 800,000 New York households are food insecure, she said.

In Northern Manhattan lines in local food pantries have reflected those numbers, taxing organizers who are struggling to produce bags for the influx of new faces.

According to program director Jemette Smith, New Covenant Holiness Church on W. 157th Street normally distributes food twice a month, but distribution has gone to four days a month in both October and November because of the multitude of requests.

In Inwood, the Friday morning line along Post Avenue for the Worldwide Missionary Movement food pantry on W. 207th Street has nearly doubled.

“It’s been crazy” organizer Ismael Trinidad said. Lines have gone from 250 people to 400 in recent months despite the cold weather, which usually thins the numbers. 

And a few weeks back, at the basement pantry on Audubon Avenue and W. 176th Street, organizer Martha Pepin had to tell about 60 people at the end of her line that there was no more food. Two weeks before that, the spiked demand had depleted her food stock so much that she decided not to distribute that week.

Trinidad equates the new faces to the economy finally taking its effect on residents, forcing those like Chino to seek help.

To respond to the unexpected lines, pantries have had to re-distribute food bags at the last minute. And some are cracking down on pantry-hoppers, working with other organizations in the area to discourage the same person from collecting at multiple sites and leaving someone else with nothing.

Faced with an unexpectedly long line and scrambling to stretch the food, Trinidad was at the end of his rope about a month ago he said.

“I said guys we can’t keep this up,” he told his volunteer staff.

For pantry organizers like Trinidad, the message to their donors is the same as the message they’re getting from the clients they serve – “we need more food.”

That message is being heard repeatedly by people at the top, like Carlos Rodriguez Vice President of Agency Relations & Programs at the Food Bank for New York City, a massive operation that procures and distributes food to over 1,000 agencies citywide and a major supplier to the food pantries interviewed for this article.

Rodriguez said over 90 percent of his agencies are reporting new faces on their lines and many are asking him for help. For now, he said, he has been able to help, getting more food delivered to pantries that need it.

With a looming food shortage years before the recession hit, he said the organization had already been making the case for more support from the federal government and major food manufactures and foundations. “When the recession hit, we were like, now we really have a problem,” he said. And help finally arrived.

The baseline federal funding went up this year, he said, along with increased donations from foundations and corporations. The Food Bank also got a huge boost from stimulus money from The Economic Recovery Act.

But, Rodriguez said, “At the same time, unemployment isn’t going away.” The stimulus money, a big help he said, was only for 2009. He fears what will happen next year.

For her part Gillibrand announced her support for a bill she is co-sponsoring that would double federal funding to emergency food programs in the next calendar year, from $250 to $500 million, through The Emergency Food Assistance Program (TEFAP) within the Department of Agriculture.

This bill along with two others that would extend tax incentives to corporations and individuals that contribute to food inventory, Gillibrand believes, will move through her polarized Congress with ease.

“These are the types of bills that bring us together,” she said.